Flag of truce
by Martina
Summary: Only elves know about fairies. As it happens, they also hate them. One young fairy joins the Fellowship and she must find peace with her destiny as the flag of truce waved by her folk. OC Chapter 8 is up!
1. Default Chapter

**Disclaimer: **It's really very simple. If you recognize them, they're not mine.  
  
**A/N: **Down the bottom.  
  
**Chapter 1  
  
**The final moments of the council of Elrond.  
  
So the Fellowship was complete. Or was it?  
  
"I'm going too!"  
  
Most present were at a loss as to where this new voice emanated from. Legolas was the first to spy a small form ambling down from one of the taller trees surrounding the little courtyard. The sound of leaves rustling and branches bending alerted the less keen-sighted to the location of the latest intruder. She dropped nimbly to her feet behind the assembled company, stood as tall as her frame allowed, and repeated emphatically, "I'm going too."  
  
"No you're not," stated Elrond matter-of-factly. "And begone with you. I warned you specifically to stay away."  
  
"And that, specifically, is why you should have known I'd be here anyway," said the girl in a tone of voice which clearly suggested they'd had the same argument many times before.  
  
Elrond, trying to ignore the insolent youngster, reclaimed the council's attention and began announcing certain practical arrangements.  
  
"You're not listening to me, are you? I said I'm going too," said the girl, pushing her way into the circle.  
  
"And I said you're not," stated Elrond with a tired expression. "The Fellowship is complete. They have no use for you. Seek your adventures elsewhere."  
  
"Well, I think they may well have use for me. Besides, all the good folk of Middle-Earth are represented here, except mine. That hardly seems fair."  
  
"What do you mean, except yours?" Legolas cut in. "You are elven, are you not?"  
  
"Actually, no," said the girl with a smug grin. "I'm a fairy."  
  
"A fairy!" cried Legolas and his father who stood at the opposite side of the circle, almost in unison. Both carried expressions of apprehension and intense disgust.  
  
"What is the meaning of this?" demanded Thranduil of Elrond. "A fairy in Rivendel? Walking unchecked among elves? Unheard of!"  
  
"Easy, Thranduil, Legolas. Do not be alarmed," Elrond tried to calm his guests down. "Allow me to explain. This," he gestured towards the girl who stood immovable with a small smile and crossed arms, "is Ceirin. She was found as a baby near Rivendel, almost twenty years ago. We assumed her to be of our kind, and raised her as one of our own. But the child's true parentage soon became apparent."  
  
"Then why did you not send her away, back to her own folk where she belongs?" asked Legolas logically, pointedly addressing Elrond.  
  
"I don't appreciate you speaking about me as if I were not even here," Ceirin said flatly, cutting off Elrond who had been about to answer the question. She and Legolas exchanged a look not a million miles from hostile, before she continued, "they tried, you know. But the fairies didn't want me back. So these good elves took pity on me once more, and I've been a thorn in their collective side ever since."  
  
"Ceirin, don't be melodramatic," said Elrond, beginning to look irritated.  
  
"Oh, that's right. Forgive me, my lord," said Ceirin innocently, eyebrows drawn together. She looked around the circle, before adding conspiratorially, "they hate to be reminded of the fact they don't even like me. Understandable, isn't it? After all, it's very unelvish to be so uncharitable as to dislike a protegee. Therefore, my lord," she turned her head sharply back towards Elrond, "I will inconvenience you no more by attempting to be agreeable and failing to your own dismay. Rather, I will give you an excuse to dislike me openly. I will disobey you, and join the Fellowship anyway."  
  
Elrond did not seem impressed by this display of reversed psychology. Nor did Legolas.  
  
"You are not travelling with us," he said dryly, in a tone as if declining someone's idiotic suggestion to go and hunt a Balrog.  
  
"Hang on a minute!" Sam piped up. The hobbits had been exchanging mystified looks. "Have we missed something? What are fairies? And if she's one, how come she looks exactly like an elf?"  
  
Once again, Ceirin cut off Elrond who'd been about to go into an explanation. "Your name is Sam?"  
  
"It is."  
  
"And you're a gardener, aren't you?"  
  
Sam looked nonplussed, as did all others present who were not elves, or Aragorn. Or Gandalf.  
  
"Yes," he replied hesitantly.  
  
"Then you enjoy watching things grow, don't you?"  
  
"Yes, very much," Sam said cheerfully, momentarily forgetting mystification when reminded of his life's passion.  
  
"And have you ever wondered," continued Ceirin with an undefinable smile, "what makes them grow?"  
  
"Rain does. And sunshine."  
  
"Of course. But what if I told you that's only half the story?"  
  
"Are you meaning to tell us," asked Merry, who had connected the dots a little quicker than the others, "that fairies make things grow?"  
  
She turned away and began to pace up and down a little. "Not exactly," she replied, searching for a way to explain. "Fairies don't exactly make things grow, but help them grow in any case."  
  
"That doesn't sound too bad," said Frodo. "If that's what fairies do, why do they get so worked up about you being one?" he asked, gesturing towards the elves.  
  
"You do not know what they really are," said Legolas. He detached himself from the group he'd been flanking and walked towards Ceirin, who stood somewhat forlornly between Elrond and the Fellowship. "Fairies are deceitful creatures," he told them, while beginning to slowly circle around the girl, like a cat arounds its prey. "They are selfish, fickle, erratic, completely untrustworthy. Yes, they have the power to make things grow, to uphold the circle of life. They have great power. And they squander most of it to indulge in whatever suits their fancy. Treacherous creatues, who hold the power of illusion and answer to no master. They will play any cruel trick on man or elf for their own idle amusement. If you've ever lost something you couldn't find in spite of hours of searching, it will have been a fairy who removed it, for the pleasure of watching you search. If you've ever walked alone at night and heard frightening noises, as of something following you, count on it that it was a fairy toying with you." Here, he turned to face the Fellowship. "It must be Frodo's decision, no one else's. But I speak strongly against allowing such a creature to join our Fellowship," he concluded. "We cannot trust her."  
  
Ceirin had kept herself remarkably placid as Legolas circled her, but now, as he stood beside her facing the Fellowship – purposefully, it seemed, to keep from showing her his back – if looks could be arrows, the elf could have rivalled any pincushion.  
  
All eyes turned to Frodo.  
  
"It's not my decision alone," he began shyly. "We're not Frodo's Fellowship, we're the Fellowship of the Ring. We're all in this together, embarking on the same mission. But I do have something to say. If there's one thing I've learned in the last few weeks, it is that actions speak louder than words. You can use words like friendship and loyalty and trust, but they won't mean anything until you back them up with your deeds." He looked affectionately at each of the other hobbits. "I think everyone deserves a chance to let their actions speak for them. Many things are said of hobbits. Many of them are said by hobbits. But I know those things don't necessarily apply to each one of us. Maybe it's the same with fairies," he shrugged and smiled at Ceirin. "I would like us to give Ceirin a chance."  
  
She smiled back happily, ignored Legolas and aimed a self-righteous glare at Elrond, but cowered under the mighty elf's rather icy gaze.  
  
"I agree with Mister Frodo," Sam put in. "Anyone who is responsible for flowers growing can't be all that bad."  
  
Behind him, Aragorn and Gandalf exchanged a thoughtful look. "I've heard many stories about these fairies," said Gandalf in cultured vowels, "but I must admit I've never met one until this day. While I think our elvish friend might be right in advising us to be cautious, perhaps it would be wise to follow the hobbit's example and give this young one the benefit of the doubt." He raised his eyebrows at Ceirin to get the message across that she was on probation.  
  
While Ceirin successfully kept from cringing, Legolas bowed his head.  
  
Gimli, eager to see an elf proved wrong, also expressed his acceptance of an added member. Boromir merely pulled down the corners of his mouth and nodded his head.  
  
"Then it is decided," said Aragorn with all the authority he had not yet claimed. "Our Fellowship will consist of ten."  
  
Elrond kept his silence. His pride itched at being passed over, but he knew at his age that pride was rather irrelevant. So the girl was a bit of a handful, a rebel without a cause. She knew next to nothing about fighting, had never met a bow or a sword up close – he'd seen to that – and had never been outside of Rivendel, to his knowledge. But she might find a way to be useful. She did own gifts even the elf had little understanding of. And while to some extent she did represent her own fairy folk, she represented Rivendel too. And maybe, just maybe, she might make them proud. Her graceful acceptance of membership to the Fellowship was a promising start.  
  
"I have no sword, bow or axe," she said solemnly, bowing her head towards the Fellowship, "but what little I can do to ensure Frodo's safety and further the success of this crucial mission, it shall be done."  
  
The members of the Fellowship each set about their own preparations as the council of Elrond dispersed. Legolas walked away straight-backed without sparing Ceirin another glance. Frodo went to his room to meditate on his decision in peace, while the other hobbits tentatively approached Ceirin for a meticulous inspection of yet an other new and intriguing sort of creature. Pippin made her bend down so he could touch her ears, which were longer than an elf's and expressively mobile like an animal's. She unexpectedly twitched the one he was looking at, which elicited a chorus of requests to do that again.  
  
"One thing, I don't understand," said Sam. "No hobbit has ever seen a fairy, or even heard of one. But if you make things grow, don't you sort of have to be wherever things are growing? And there's lots in the Shire. So why have we never seen your folk?"  
  
"Easy," she replied casually. "We can make ourselves tiny, or even invisible."  
  
The hobbits gaped at her. "Smaller than a hobbit?" asked Merry.  
  
"Much smaller."  
  
"Well, show us then. I'd like to see that," requested Pippin.  
  
"Can't," she said. "I know fairies in general can do that, but I can't. I wouldn't know how. But I could show you my wings," she added with a mischievous smile.  
  
The three hobbits clamoured that she should. She stepped back, bowed her head a little and took a deep breath. Then, with a faint purple glow, there they were, sprouting inexplicably from her back. Shaped much like butterfly wings, shimmering semi-transparently in purple, blue and indigo.  
  
The hobbits ooh'd and ah'd. Pippin reached out, but found that his fingers passed right through the delicate looking wing, which explained why they could sprout right through her clothes.  
  
"Take me flying," pleaded Merry. "Please, just once. I've always dreamed of being able to fly."  
  
"Oh, no. Elrond would be angry if he saw. He doesn't like me using them for no good reason. And I think he's right. Whatever reason I was given these wings for, it's not so I can amuse myself when I've nothing better to do and frighten the wits out of birds."  
  
"Well," observed Sam dryly, "I guess none of us are wondering if you were really raised by elves."  
  
**A/N: **I know what you're thinking. Really. A tenth member to the Fellowship. A _female _member. An immediate build-up of tension between her and Leggy. This positively _reeks _of Mary Sue. Yah. I know. I don't like that smell either. But this is the story I want to tell (having borrowed inspiration for my take on fairies from the animation picture 'Ferngully: The Last Rainforest' and from Traci Harding's breathtaking novel series 'The Ancient Future') and I am determined to fall into as few as possible of the traps Mary Sue has dug for us fanfiction writers. Do you know why we've given Mary Sue a name? Because it makes her easier to fight than a nameless foe. Also, there is a distinction to be made between Mary Sueish plots and Mary Sueish characterizations. I am aware of and will try to avoid both. But even so, neither _makes _a Mary Sue. It's the author's wishful identification with her own original character that does. And unconvincing as it may sound, I am _not _imagining myself to be Ceirin.  
  
**A/N 2: **I've read the books and seen the movies several times, but I'm by no means an expert on Tolkien's canon. Also, I don't own copies of either the books or the movies, and therefore find myself in the impossibility to go and look up every detail. So if you notice anything that is flagrantly wrong, either forgive me and take it in stride, or let me know so I can fix it. 


	2. chapter 2

**Chapter 2  
  
**The Fellowship had been on the road for a few days now. After having left behind the safety of Rivendel, all were on their guard and pushing hard to make good time.  
  
Ceirin had been on her best behaviour, never complaining, taking her turn carrying one of the hobbits if they threatened to fall behind on their short legs, even if she was not much taller than them herself. At first, she'd tried to keep to herself as much as possible, staying well out of Legolas' way. Until, one morning, he'd looked at her with his flinty eyes and told her: "You, with your fairy sight, use it."  
  
She'd understood then. Every single one of them held responsibility for the safety of the group. Each pair of eyes and ears was needed. Even hers. Not that she hadn't been paying attention, but Legolas' simple command expressed a sense of togetherness that, for the first time, explicitly included her. It pleased her, in a way, and she became extra alert.  
  
Gandalf walked beside her often, asking her questions about fairies that she didn't know the answers to.  
  
"I don't know, Gandalf," she frequently had to tell him. "You had to learn your magic, didn't you? You had to be taught, you weren't born with it. Well, if my folk have a special kind of magic, no one's ever bothered to teach me, so I don't know."  
  
She often found herself eyeing Gimli with an odd kind of envy. He and Legolas were continuously bickering, wise-cracking about the other's race. She'd never understood much of this age-old animosity between elves and dwarves, but enough to know that while much of it rested on disdain, there was also an undercurrent of respect. Strangely, she would be wishing that Legolas would mock her, too.  
  
As the landscape changed from woodlands to mountainous terrain, the Fellowship settled into a balance, all baggage they bore from their diverse backgrounds evened out beneath the burden they shared – except, perhaps, for the good-natured squabbling between the dwarf and the elf. Ceirin's youthful excitability was inspired in unexpected ways. Where there had been anticipation of wild adventure and perilous encounters, she found simple awe for the rough beauty of a world she'd never seen, so different from the careful grace of Rivendel. She was a little disappointed that the hobbits had so quickly lost their fascination with her, when it had come to seem unlikely that she would use her wings or do any fairy things.  
  
The Fellowship had put up camp one evening just before sunset. Aragorn had pressed for them to make use of every hour of daylight, but had conceded after a good look at the hobbits. They were by far not so well-trained as he and Boromir, or so sturdy as the dwarf or so light-footed as the elf and the fairy. They needed rest.  
  
Each was busy with their own occupation. Aragorn, Boromir and Gandalf were softly conversing with each other, Legolas was closely inspecting the tips on his arrows for signs of weakness, and the hobbits were roasting something above a small fire.  
  
"So are these stories they tell about fairies true?" asked Frodo of Ceirin, out of the blue. She'd overheard him asking Gandalf to tell him some of the stories the evening before.  
  
She looked at him intensely, which worked especially well, considering the unusual colour of her eyes, plain grey but with a touch of lavender. "Does it matter?"  
  
This counter-question confused Frodo momentarily. "Of course it matters," he said somewhat uncertainly.  
  
"What's the difference, in the end, between made-up stories and real ones, when everyone believes them anyway?" she said sharply.  
  
"I don't know. I mean, there should be a difference, shouldn't there. They say things about fairies that are not very nice. That's not fair, if they're not true."  
  
"But it's so easy to tell stories about what you cannot see, and talk bad of those who don't care to come and defend themselves," she replied, hyper- aware of Legolas being within earshot.  
  
"You're here..." Frodo tried weakly.  
  
"Yes. But how am I meant to defend my folk when I myself do not know what they're like? I've never met another fairy, Frodo, or at least I can't remember ever having met one."  
  
"Ever?"  
  
"No."  
  
They both fell silent for a while.  
  
"If the elves were the only ones who knew of the existence of fairies," he asked then, addressing Legolas, "why did they keep it a secret?"  
  
"What would others have done with knowledge of such a race?" said Legolas, putting down his arrows. "They are dangerous creatures," he continued emphatically. "I'll not change my opinion about that on the basis of acquaintance with one of them."  
  
"I know. And I do not ask that you would," said Ceirin, looking pointedly at the tips of her boots instead of at the elf. "But I can't help being one of them. I am not a danger to you. There is a great evil threatening the world. But fairies are not it. They are the ones who help all forms of life to become what they are meant to be, in case you forgot that."  
  
"I did not forget. And I never called fairies evil. I called them dangerous. There is a difference. Good and evil lie in the hearts of all sentient beings. There is no easy distinction to make like that between light and darkness. It is not so that one can only exist in the absence of the other. Every intentional act reflects both."  
  
"Exactly. Do you remember what Frodo said at the council... To let one's actions speak for them. But you will not give me a chance, will you? All you give me is coldness."  
  
"You mistake reserve for coldness."  
  
"Right," said Ceirin, picking imaginary dust off her trousers.  
  
Frodo had been looking back and forth between them, like watching a match of kickball which, the way hobbits played it, usually consisted of the ball being kicked clear back and forth across the field with all the players stampeding after it. He couldn't help but suspect there was something of a competition being played here, too. If elves and dwarves disliked one another in a way that allowed for light-hearted mockery, the discord between elves and fairies apparently ran much deeper.  
  
None of the others had been following this conversation, and they looked after Ceirin with various degrees of surprise as she suddenly sprang up and strode briskly out of the small circle of light around the fire. As soon as she was gone, they returned to what they were doing. A slight tension in Legolas' shoulders betrayed a momentary uneasiness with the conversation's abrupt end, but he ignored it and went back to inspecting his arrows. Only Gandalf looked unsurprised as his eyes followed the girl until darkness swallowed her.  
  
They were high up in the mountains, above the tree line, so there was nothing for her to clamber up into as she usually did when wanting to be alone for some reason. The moon was high and bright that night, and almost full. Inviting. Tempting. She was tempted, like most nights, to spread her wings and fly into it. A brief moment of doubt, then she shrugged off Elrond's voice telling her to her mind's ears that she should keep her feet on the ground where they belonged. Pushing off with her feet was not necessary, as her wings did not rely on the limited buoyancy of air like those of the insect they mimicked. As gravity lost its hold on the fairy, she soared up, leaving behind one by one the thoughts that weighed her down as she gained height. There were little grace and beauty in the form of her wild airborne dance, but its reckless abandonment spoke of an exuberance that cared not about beauty.  
  
Hours later, she tiptoed carefully past the sleeping forms around the fire, to find her own place for the night. Only Legolas was awake, predictably. The others slept soundly thanks to complete trust in the elf's vigilance.  
  
"Good night," she said softly as she rolled up in her cloak and settled down.  
  
A few moments of silence, then, "good night," came a whispered response.  
  
Aragorn was the first to awake just before sunrise the next morning and began rousing the others from their slumber while Legolas poked up the fire to improvise some class of a breakfast.  
  
Merry sat up, smacking his lips, and prodded at Pippin who was still snoring next to him. "Hello," he grinned sleepily, spotting Ceirin. "And where were you off to, last night?"  
  
"Morning, Merry," she replied. "I was just off. You know, airing my thoughts a little. Actually, I went flying," she added with a little smile.  
  
"What?" Legolas' head shot up to glare at her. "You went what?"  
  
"Flying," she said timidly. "What's wrong? Didn't you know I could do that?"  
  
"Of course I knew, don't be daft," he snapped. "But are you completely out of your mind? What were you thinking?" He stood up to tower over Ceirin who was still on her knees, rearranging her cloak. "Remaining undetected is our best chance. Sauron's spies are everywhere, you silly fairy. And the best thing you can think to do is to go fluttering about, giving away our position to any ring wraith within a fifty league radius!" His voice was uncharacteristically hard and merciless.  
  
"I... I'm sorry, Legolas..." Ceirin stammered. "I didn't think about that." Her long ears had dropped to stick out just below horizontally, which gave her a very young, very remorseful look.  
  
"No, of course you didn't," he replied, serving her a look of undisguised loathing. "It would make sense that you'd go flying on the spur of the moment, and forget to think about the consequences for the rest of us. You put us all in danger."  
  
Aragorn heard what was happening and intervened. He grasped his friend by the shoulder and turned him away from Ceirin. "Legolas, lighten up a little, will you. You're right, it was very unwise. But if we had been spotted by a ring wraith, he would have been upon us by now. We've been lucky. Do you understand?" he said, turning to Ceirin. "We've been lucky. Do not let it happen again." He gave her an especially Aragorn look, face even, jaw tight, eyes flat blue.  
  
The girl was on the verge of tears, had to swallow them back to nod and say: "Yes, I understand."  
  
Gandalf, who was adjusting the tilt of his hat behind the man and the elf, caught Ceirin's eye and winked at her. She blinked back once, twice, then rolled her eyes and sighed deeply.  
  
As soon as the hobbits had organized breakfast, all dug in. Legolas sat cross-legged, chewing on a mouthful of food, when Ceirin sidled up to him and held out a tasty-looking piece of fruit. "For you, if you'd like it," she said, barely audible.  
  
He swallowed his food, turned his flinty stare on her, ignored the fruit proffered in her hand. "I don't need your flag of truce," he said flatly. "I'm not angry, only disappointed. Give that to one of the hobbits." Then he returned to fixing the middle-distance ahead of him.  
  
Ceirin crept away quietly. She took a seat somewhat aside from the rest, looked at the fruit in her hand, at Legolas, back at the fruit, then shrugged with one shoulder and bit into it.  
  
A few minutes later, as the others were packing up to leave, Legolas appeared suddenly in front of her. "That was rude of me. I'm sorry," he said simply.  
  
She made no reply, held out the half-eaten piece of fruit to him. He hesitated, then took it gently from her hand and ate the rest of it while walking away. 


	3. chapter 3

**Chapter 3  
  
**The Fellowship had stopped to have lunch. Boromir was teaching Merry and Pippin some of the basics of swordplay, while Sam was baking sausages and the others were reclining here and there on the rocky surface to enjoy some welcome rest.  
  
"Two, one, five. Good! Very good," said Boromir to Pippin as they practiced a few parries. Aragorn provided some running commentary now and then, telling Pippin to move his feet, while Ceirin watched on with amazement.  
  
"It really doesn't look very hard at all, does it?" she remarked to Aragorn. "Do you suppose I might be able to learn something like that?"  
  
"I don't see why not," he answered, keeping his eyes on Boromir and the hobbits. "You have both your arms and both your legs. Though how long you would keep them, I cannot say," he added, without taking his pipe from his mouth.  
  
She blinked at him, then broke into a wide grin. "Seriously. Could I learn that?"  
  
Aragorn finally turned to look at her. "Why do you want to?"  
  
She stared back with one eyebrow comically drawn up. "That's a silly question. To protect myself, to protect any of you, should it come to that. Why else? To fight, Aragorn. Something tells me we'll have seen a lot of fights before this is over."  
  
"I fear you're right. But there are many ways to fight. What makes you think a sword is the right way for you?" He took the pipe from his mouth and focused on her more intently. "Do you believe you would be able to drive that steel into a creature's flesh? Even an orc's? You can feel it, you know. Tearing through tissue, ripping it apart." He regarded her questioningly, half expecting her to scrunch up her nose and say something along the lines of 'well, when you put it that way, no thanks'.  
  
But she showed a different spirit. She moved closer to Aragorn, leaned forward and said gravely: "It doesn't sound terribly inviting, I'll grant, but still more so than standing by idly and watching such a creature drive its sword into the flesh of one of you. I vowed to do whatever I could to protect Frodo, as you did. My skills are limited. But I can learn. I'm not afraid." Her ears were aimed back rigidly, like a startled cat's, the tips were trembling slightly.  
  
He chuckled at her, of all things, reached out and lightly patted her shoulder.  
  
"Are you laughing at me?" she asked with a note of indignation.  
  
"By no means," he replied, growing serious again. "It is almost time to be on our way again, but next time we stop, I will see about teaching you a few things." Ceirin was about to thank him heartily in advance, when he added, while tapping his pipe to the sole of his boot to remove the ash: "But it might not be a bad idea to ask Legolas to show you how to handle a bow. Seems to me that might be a more suitable weapon for you."  
  
Ceirin thoughtfully fixed the scene before her for a moment. Merry and Pippin had charged Boromir, screaming something about 'for the Shire!' and had wrestled him to the ground where they now all lay in a heap, laughing. She allowed herself a brief smile, before letting her eyes wander to Legolas, wondering if he had overheard. But he was not paying attention, instead he was staring fixedly into the distance. She looked to see what had caught his eye, just as Sam asked: "What is that?"  
  
"Nothing. It's just a wisp of cloud," replied Gimli.  
  
"It's moving fast. Against the wind," said Boromir, which caused the others to spring to readiness. Indeed, the dark cloudlike formation in the distance was approaching quickly.  
  
"Crebain from Duneland!" cried Legolas, eyes widening.  
  
Before he had finished his words, Ceirin was moving. She flew close to the ground, almost too fast for Legolas' eyes to follow, roughly along a line at an angle with the course the cloud of birds was taking, directly towards the Fellowship. She followed the profile of the rocky terrain as closely as possible to avoid detection by the spies, often risking painful impact with some of the higher unexpected outcrops. When she had met the menacing cloud three quarters of the way, she suddenly flew up, lingered a moment and then raced directly away from them.  
  
The ploy worked. They followed.  
  
Meanwhile, the rest of the Fellowship had quickly pulled the fire apart to stop the smoke rising and giving away their position, and had hidden under what scarce vegetation they could find. When they saw the birds moving away, they sighed in relief.  
  
Merry and Pippin had been so taken aback by the sudden appearance of danger, they hadn't noticed where Ceirin had gone. "Where's Ceirin?" asked Merry, looking around.  
  
"Luring them away from us," said Legolas, staring half incredulously in the direction in which they'd disappeared.  
  
"Spies of Saruman," said Gandalf. "The passage south is being watched. We must take the pass of Caradhras.  
  
The elf and the men quickly decided that they shouldn't wait around for Ceirin to reappear, lest the birds return before she did.  
  
"But what if she can't find us again?" Frodo protested briefly. "She doesn't know we're taking a different route. Maybe one of us should stay behind."  
  
"No, Frodo," said Aragorn. "I think this time the fairy was well aware of the consequences of her actions." He looked at Legolas as he said this, not at Frodo. "She has a lesson to learn here. Let us trust her to learn it and manage on her own."  
  
Legolas nodded almost imperceptibly at his friend.  
  
And so the Fellowship set out at a brisk pace, trying to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the suspicious place. The birds had seemed to know exactly where they were. Quickly they went, towards Caradhras.  
  
Ceirin soared as fast as her wings would allow, looking back always to find the birds still close behind, though they didn't seem to be trying to gain on her either. She would have to find a different way to shake them off. She led them into ever rising terrain, into the heart of the mountains. She swivelled around a sharp stone shoulder jutting out and, momentarily out of the birds' view, nestled close up behind it, squirmed into a tiny nook in the stoney wall.  
  
Once again, her manoeuver had the desired effect. The birds flew right past her. As she heard the sound of their beating wings and their raspy screeches die away in the distance, she realized she'd been holding her breath, and let it shudderingly escape. Shaken as she was, she thought immediately to find a different place to hide in. If the birds found they'd lost her, they might return to the last place where they'd seen her, which was the very cliff she was hiding behind. And such an encounter, she'd prefer to avoid. She scanned the opposite mountainside, spied a cranny which should be just large enough to allow her to squirm her small frame into. She dashed quickly across the dividing valley, snuggled as close into the mountain as possible.  
  
And sure enough, mere minutes later, the birds returned. She watched appalled as they spread across the mountainside opposite her, poked their beaks in every nook and cranny and then disappeared again from whence they'd come.  
  
Ceirin inwardly said thanks for a youth spent hiding away from keen-sighted elves, too frightened to even whisper the words. Wedged in her tiny haven, she rested her head against the rock and took a few deep breaths, trying to regain some balance. There, she stayed the rest of the day and all night, too uncomfortable to sleep, too certain that she should stay right where she was for the time being, to move.  
  
At the break of dawn, she awoke from the semi-conscious state one will drift into when sleep itself eludes for too long, hyper-aware of every aching muscle, every over-strained joint. Rational thought slowly began to flow again as she considered what to do next. After a few moments, she peered out from her little hide-out, scanned the area for any prying eyes, and flew down from the cliff to the valley below.  
  
She began by stretching like a cat after a nap and basking her battered body a moment or two in the first rays of sunlight. This immediately made her feel better, and she was soon eyeing her surroundings on the prowl for something edible. She hadn't eaten since lunch the day before. The few practical skills she'd been taught at Rivendel included how to identify plants with edible parts. Though the vegetation was mostly different here, she detected a few familiar berry-sporting bushes and ate some of them. The berries were just short of ripe, and Ceirin wished her own folk would have taught her how to help them grow, as she knew they could do. But it could not be helped, and she decided the unripe sourness of the berries was refreshing in its own way.  
  
Suddenly she heard a faint noise behind her that sounded suspiciously like laughter. Ceirin spun around just in time to see what she thought was the edge of a wing disappear behind a tree.  
  
A wing very much like her own.  
  
"Who's there?" she called out, on her guard. Never having met an other fairy in twenty years, she was beginning to doubt whether one would ever actually show itself to her. Better be sure. And after a close encounter with a flock of birds that had seemed to have the ability to think rationally, she would be surprised by no dangerous oddity that resided outside the safety of Rivendel. When she received no response, she called out again: "Who's there?"  
  
More laughter bubbled up behind the tree, and a crystal clear voice sang out: "Tamesis ite we. Kechepaun ghanet io mahele?"  
  
This was neither Westron nor any form of Elvish Ceirin had ever heard of.  
  
"What are you saying? I cannot understand you," she called.  
  
"Silly Tamesis. Do you not recognize one of your folk if you see her?" replied the voice now, in Westron.  
  
"My folk? Are you a fairy?" Ceirin's heart was racing in her breast, beating like a large bird in a small cage. Her knees had turned weak and she felt like crying. "Are you?" she called again, voice shaky.  
  
The owner of the voice stepped out from behind the tree. A young woman, looking like an exact replica of Ceirin herself, only with white hair instead of pitch black and wings a few shades lighter and much more brilliant. Her dress seemed to be of the same semi-transparent material as her wings, but then so did her entire body so this made no difference.  
  
"I just realized you hadn't technically seen me. Only the tip of my wing. Do you recognize me now?" said the woman logically, smiling winsomely.  
  
Ceirin had dropped to her knees. "Recognize you?" she said, muffled behind the hands she'd clasped over the lower half of her face.  
  
"Yes, you know. To know again. To remember from before."  
  
Ceirin shook her head slightly.  
  
"Oh, well, no matter. You are Tamesis, I am Amabel. Now next time we meet, we will recognize each other."  
  
This brand of logic vaguely reminded Ceirin of an old elf she'd once met who had spent four hundred years trapped in a collapsed cave and had gone slightly weak in the head as a result. Her own logic compelled her to ask many questions, but the first she settled on was a detail that had almost escaped her: "What did you call me?"  
  
"I called you by your name, silly. Tamesis," Amabel replied, still smiling unnervingly happily.  
  
"But my name is Ceirin," said Ceirin.  
  
The other fairy rolled her eyes dramatically, which was an impressive sight as they were an even brighter class of purple than Ceirin's own. "Yes, but that is the name they gave you," she said impatiently, making 'they' sound as if she were speaking about incomprehensibly strange creatures to a person who thought about them the same way.  
  
"They? You mean the elves?" said Ceirin warily.  
  
"Yes, them," replied Amabel. "But now, let's talk about why I've come to see you..."  
  
"Hey, wait a moment!" Ceirin interrupted her. "Do not change the subject. The elves. I grew up with them. Why?" She regained her feet, tried to keep her knees under control, stood akimbo. "Who are my parents? Why did they do this to me? Why did they not want me?"  
  
"You ask many questions," said the woman, absently bringing up a hand to play with a lock of white hair.  
  
"And you answer none," replied Ceirin matter-of-factly.  
  
"No," said Amabel, fixing her and letting go of the strain of hair to cross her arms. "For which I have my reasons. So you might as well stop being nosey and be quiet and let me help you."  
  
Ceirin dropped her hands from her hips, shoulders slumped and ears drooping sideways. "Twenty years I've known nothing. And the first fairy I meet tells me I'm nosey to ask."  
  
"What are twenty years," remarked the woman dryly. "You'll get over it, Tamesis."  
  
"And stop calling me that! My name is Ceirin. If you'll not tell me who gave me the other name, then it doesn't exist to me."  
  
"Fine. Ceirin," said Amabel, a tightness playing about her lips and a coldness in her eyes.  
  
"Alright then," said Ceirin, feeling a bit huffed up and not knowing what else to say. After a few moments of tense silence in which Amabel was fixing her levelly, causing her to cringe, she asked: "So you said you've come to help me."  
  
"That's right," said the woman rather coldly.  
  
"Then could you start by ripening up those berries a bit? The ones I ate are upsetting my stomach," she requested, gesturing helplessly towards the bush and rubbing her stomach with the other hand.  
  
Amabel regarded her mockingly, eyebrows drawn up. She strolled over to the bush, ran a fingertip along a branch of it that bore berries. Ceirin watched in amazement as within seconds, they turned a rich, deep red. Ravenous, she fell on the berries, picked off every last one of them, savoured their sweetness.  
  
"Thank you," she said weakly when she was done.  
  
"That's alright," said the woman more mildly than before, sinking down on her haunches next to Ceirin. "But don't expect me to do that for you again. It's messing with the balance, that is."  
  
"The balance?" asked Ceirin, still licking juice off her fingers.  
  
"Oh, Great Clouds, you really don't know anything, do you?" said Amabel with a concerned frown.  
  
Ceirin shook her head in the manner of a child denying to know where all the cookies had gone.  
  
"Right. Well, first things first. You, young fairy, seem to find yourself in a spot of bother, don't you?" said Amabel, poking a slender finger into Ceirin's shoulder. "On your own, need to find your friends, and you're not sure how."  
  
"Well, quite. I mean, they're not likely to still be in the same spot where I left them, are they? And I'm not sure if I could even find that again. It's bound to be a long way from here. I flew away in such a rush."  
  
"Right. So here begins the first lesson."  
  
"Yes?" said Ceirin eagerly.  
  
"Space..."  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"... is an illusion."  
  
"What?"  
  
"As in it's not real. Not in the sense you believe it to be, anyway."  
  
"I don't understand."  
  
"Of course you don't. Just close your eyes a moment and bear with me."  
  
Ceirin shifted to cross-legged position and closed her eyes as requested, poised for the lesson.  
  
"What is above you?" began Amabel.  
  
"The sky," replied Ceirin.  
  
"And beyond that?"  
  
"I don't know. Nothing. Space, a whole lot of space."  
  
"Can you imagine an end to it? A boundary?"  
  
"No, not without wondering what is beyond it."  
  
"Very good," smiled Amabel. "And what is below you?"  
  
"Earth."  
  
"And beyond that?"  
  
"I see where this is going," said Ceirin, pleased with herself. "Beyond that is the other side of the world, and beyond that more sky, and more space and no boundaries."  
  
"Very good," Amabel said again. "So you see how you are the center of all this infinity. Wherever you go, infinity stretches out to all sides from where you are. Can you understand it? Can you feel it?"  
  
"Yes," said Ceirin breathlessly, amazed by the power of this simple mental exercise.  
  
"The next step," Amabel continued, "is to understand that if every point is the center of infinity, then every point is essentially the same. No two can be divided, for all are the center of the same infinity. There is no such thing as space. You think that we are here in this valley, on the ground next to a berry bush, but that is an illusion."  
  
"I understand, and yet I don't," said Ceirin, opening her eyes.  
  
"That's alright. What use is an immortal lifetime if you can learn anything in a single lesson?"Amabel grinned. "Take this lesson with you, back to your friends. Learn from it as you go along." She got up and began to walk away.  
  
"But you haven't told me how to find them," protested Ceirin, getting up also to go after Amabel.  
  
The woman turned around to face her again. "Yes, I have. You are already in the same place as they. Your mind may not grasp it yet, but you are a fairy, an elemental of Air. You will know in all the right ways. Close your eyes and think of your friends. Let the air take you to them." And with these words she was gone. Just like that. Vanished.  
  
Ceirin looked about her wildly, confused by Amabel's inexplicable disappearance. She plonked down on the ground again quite gracelessly and started kneading both hands through her unruly black hair, found that it was a mess from yesterday's crazy flight, full of dust and a bug or two. She thought about everything the fairy had told her, figured she might as well give it a go.  
  
She got up, closed her eyes, let the wings appear at her back, and thought of her friends with all her might, tried to imagine them in as much detail as she could. As real as if she was actually looking at them. An image appeared before her eyes, of all of them hasting along a ridge, Gandalf leading the way, Gimli closing the line, Legolas sprinting from one high outcrop to an other to get the best overviews of their wide surroundings. Ceirin was unsure if this image was coming to her from her own memory and imagination or from somewhere else, but she whispered to herself: "That's where I'm going..."  
  
She found herself floating upwards as if lifted by a strong gust of wind. After three unexpected lashes from treebranches on her way up, she opened her eyes and hoped whatever fairy trick this was would still work. It did. She found herself flying without thinking, covering the distance as if following an old and familiar path from a favourite walk.  
  
After what seemed a mere few minutes, she saw the ridge from her vision appear before her, and on it were her friends.  
  
Legolas was the first to spot Ceirin, predictably. "Look," he called to the others, pointing at Ceirin.  
  
"Ceirin!" yelled Frodo in welcome.  
  
"Hello! We thought we'd lost you!" cried Merry and Pippin.  
  
Ceirin set down on the ground gently, retracted the wings, looked around incredulously at her friends. "Well, I'll be buggered," she said, "it worked."  
  
"What did?" asked Gandalf, crumpling his eyebrows.  
  
"Talk about it on the road, will you. We have no time to linger," interjected Aragorn as he took over the lead from Gandalf.  
  
Ceirin fell in beside the Wizard as the group began to move again, beaming a few happy smiles over her shoulder to the hobbits who waved back. "Well, let me tell you what has happened to me..." she began to relay her experiences to Gandalf. The Wizard listened patiently, inserting a hmm here and there.  
  
"One thing I don't quite understand. Well, many things, but one thing in particular," Ceirin said when she was done telling the story. "Amabel called me an elemental of Air. What does that mean, Gandalf? Is that an other word for 'fairy'?"  
  
"No... hmm, no, I shouldn't think so," replied the Wizard, deep in thought. "It must be as I suspected."  
  
"What must be?" asked Ceirin when the Wizard said nothing more.  
  
"Well, I've long suspected that there must be different types of fairies, you see. One for each element, Fire, Earth, Water and Air," Gandalf explained. "It would lead me too far to tell you why I have suspected this, but apparently there must be some truth to it."  
  
"That's nice," said Ceirin, still puzzled. "So I'm a fairy of the Air? Sounds lovely, but what does that mean?"  
  
"I don't know," said Gandalf, looking down at her sideways. "That is for you to find out." 


	4. chapter 4

**Chapter 4  
**  
Amabel's lesson and the unexpectedly easy reunion with her friends had a strong effect on Ceirin. She remembered the lucidity of her vision and the fact that she herself had called it forth, together with the almost bodily awareness of space-which-wasn't-space. She had always been envious of the sixth sense that elves seemed to possess. Many of them, like Legolas, owned a certain measure of telepathic abilities, and Elrond even had the gift of foresight. Ceirin was proud to have discovered at least a rudimentary beginning of her folk's own brand of magic, and guarded it fiercely from the elf. He would catch her sometimes, in the days to come, isolating herself from the others to try and reach out undisturbed with her own newly acquired sixth sense. She would stand with eyes closed, feet planted firmly on the ground, trying to envision the invisible as if she were looking at it, as if she were there and everywhere.  
  
"What are you doing?" he would ask, regarding her curiously.  
  
"I'm just resting my eyes. Leave me alone," she would invariably answer.  
  
No new visions presented themselves, and Ceirin started wondering what she was doing wrong. But all the same, she would not be disheartened and kept on trying.  
  
Legolas seemed to have warmed up to her a bit, finally, after her selfless stunt a few days before. He started engaging her in conversation, asking her for her opinion on things, showing concern for how she was.  
  
"This is the first time for you to be away from Rivendel, isn't it?" he asked her one evening as they all sat around a small, smoky fire.  
  
"It is," she replied curtly.  
  
"Do you miss it?"  
  
His asking such a question bemused her for a moment, then she replied: "I think we all miss our home."  
  
"Did you like living at Rivendel?"  
  
She laughed a little. "It was a bit too full of elves for my taste." Gimli's moustache twitched when he heard this. Ceirin winked at him, making sure Legolas couldn't see. "But I liked it well enough," she continued. "It was peaceful."  
  
He nodded at her, returned to staring into the fire.  
  
"What is Mirkwood like?" she asked him then, tilting her head to look past Boromir who sat between them and had just bent forward to rearrange the laces on his boot, a sincere question in her eyes.  
  
It was Legolas' turn to look a little bemused. He fixed his moonlit eyes on the fairy, before slowly unfurling a broad smile. Ceirin had previously thought him just short of handsome. He had well-formed features, but she found his face too even, too serious. This new expression pleased her much more.  
  
"At the risk of being accused of prejudice," he began, "I must say that of all the elven realms, there is none so beautiful as Mirkwood." He told the Fellowship of all the enchantments of his father's kingdom, and with every detail he related, his face became more animated.  
  
Ceirin couldn't help but smile to herself. She looked around the campfire to see the others equally enthralled. Aragorn, who sat exactly downwind of the fire, had stopped bothering to wave away the smoke. The hobbits sat with heads tilted and mouths hanging open. Gimli looked a bit sceptical at all this elven fancifulness, but even he kept silent.  
  
Legolas ended his description abruptly. "Now, tell us of the Shire," he said to the hobbits.  
  
Pippin was the first to shake off the elf's spell. "Which do you want to hear about first," he said with a mischievous grin, "the girls, the ale..."  
  
"... or the food?" Merry finished for him.  
  
They all laughed, as the hobbits set out to take them on a tour through the Shire, taking over from each other whenever they thought of another juicy joke or lively anecdote. The four hobbits turned out to be magnificent entertainers. Boromir's mouth was a scream of laughter. Tears were streaming down Gimli's cheeks. Even Legolas frequently doubled over, clutching his stomach.  
  
They'd listened to tales of the Shire for a full hour and Ceirin's sides were hurting from laughing so much, when Gandalf interrupted, wiping away some tears with the back of his hand and swallowing back a last chuckle. "Oh, my friends," he said, still a bit breathless. "I think we were all in need of an evening spent in this agreeable manner. Nothing like it to remind us all of why we are on this quest in the first place, what we are seeking to save. But the pass of Caradhras awaits to be conquered in a week or so, if our luck holds up, and we shall need our strength. Let us lay down to rest, shall we?"  
  
They all began scrambling about to find a comfortable spot near the fire. Ceirin remained motionless a few moments longer, savouring the cosy atmosphere they had created together, the ten of them. She looked sideways at Legolas, who had also remained as he sat, arms locked around drawn-up knees, head back, eyes closed and a beatific smile on his face.  
  
As if he could feel her eyes on him, he looked up to meet them. Neither smiled. Neither looked away to break the moment.  
  
Pippin did that.  
  
"Here's a spot for you," he said, tugging on Ceirin's sleeve and pointing at the space next to him.  
  
"Thanks, Pip," she told him.  
  
When she looked back toward Legolas, he was getting up to go and install himself on slightly higher ground to keep watch. She wasn't sorry. His gaze had made her uncomfortable. He had susrprised her that evening. But he was still an elf. And she was still a fairy. An unlikely friendship, at best.  
  
**A/N:** A short chapter, but the point of chapters is to divide what could be unwholesomely longwinded into digestible bits. Chew on this. 


	5. chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

"Didn't I tell you to move your feet?"

"I do."

"No. You just trip yourself on them."

Ceirin scrambled up off the ground, having some difficulty doing this and holding on to the sword she had borrowed from Boromir at the same time without cutting herself on it. She assumed a ready stance, feet spread and small hands awkwardly clutching the hilt.

"Again. I can do this," she told Aragorn with grim determination.

He lunged in with a few blows, adjusting the speed of his movements to Ceirin's inexperience, while she parried them in the way he had shown her. She had to back up and relinquish ground, but moved her feet in an impromptu orderly pattern and this time caught each blow.

"Not bad," he nodded appreciatively, "but that sword is much too heavy for you. We should find you a smaller one to practice with."

"Not to mention that it's Boromir's and he'll need it," she grinned back impishly, feeling rather pleased with herself.

Aragorn stood nonchalantly resting his own sword on the back of his neck, holding it by tip and hilt. "By the way, have you finally spoken to Legolas about teaching you to fire a bow?" he asked.

"No, Aragorn," she replied, sighing heavily. "And I know you understand my reluctance."

"Yes. But I still wish you would simply ask him. He won't bite your head off for it," he said, taking the sword from her hands and swinging both around a few times to compare the weight. "Didn't you say that you weren't afraid to learn useful skills?"

"Yeah yeah," she said, rolling her eyes. "But there is a difference between learning something and learning it from an elf."

Aragorn raised his eyebrows at her, turned to call over his shoulder to where the elf was sitting. "Legolas, come over here, please. And bring your bow. Ceirin has something to ask you." He turned back to the fairy, who was sending him scalding looks, to add in a teasing tone: "Be brave. I'm sure you will survive." Then he removed himself from the scene. Three would be a crowd.

When he came back half an hour later to tell them it was time to move on, it was to see Ceirin successfully shooting off an arrow – which is a trick in itself – with Legolas at her back, face beside hers, hands on her arms to guide the motion.

"Time to go," he called.

Ceirin nodded briefly at Legolas, jogged off to retrieve the arrow. "Good job," said Aragorn to the elf as he walked past him to join the others. Legolas made no reply.

They made good time, in spite of some weather trouble, which only increased as they approached the pass of Caradhras.

The harder the wind blew, the better Ceirin's spirits. While all of the Fellowship – aside from Legolas – huddled as deep into their cloaks as they could, the fairy walked straight-backed and beaming. Uncontrollable hair a matted mess, swaying whichever way the wind tossed it in soft peaks, like whisked egg white, if egg white were black.

The elf seemed equally in his element, suffering as little from the harsh weather as Ceirin. Whenever neither of them was busy trying to keep a hobbit on his feet, she tried to entice him into snowball battles. More often than not, he responded to a well-aimed projectile with a scolding look, sometimes to surprise her a little while later with an especially fluffy snowball square against the back of her head. Aragorn had little patience with this tomfoolery, telling them to knock it off.

"Give me a break," she would say. "It never snows in Rivendel."

The going got ever tougher as they scrambled up the steep mountain. It got so bad that the hobbits needed to be carried, sitting blue-lipped and shivering pathetically on the arms of Boromir and Aragorn.

Saruman's magic was strong and compelled them to turn back, in spite of Gandalf's valiant effort to clear them a path. So it was decided they would go through the mines of Moria. Ceirin shivered at the thought.

After the betentacled monster from the lake had sealed off the entrance to Moria behind them, while Gandalf was pondering which way they should go, Ceirin stood eyeing the stone walls which enclosed them, looking both forlorn and depressed.

"Do not be too concerned," said Legolas, touching her lightly on the shoulder which made her jump. "Gandalf will lead us through safely. Have faith in him."

"Oh, I do. It's just... I've always been a bit claustrophobic, you see. And spending half a day and a night inside a mountain's skin didn't help much," she answered, smiling weakly.

"You will be alright."

She was not alright.

As the Fellowship progressed steadily through the halls and winding staircases of Moria, it became clear that something was amiss with the fairy. She had turned quite pale inside the first day and was shivering non-stop by the end of the second.

Gandalf ordered a stop for what they assumed was the night after the third day in a small chamber. None of the Fellowship – except Gimli – seemed to be very fond of this strange deserted underground city. At least in this chamber they could pretend to be simply inside a room in an ordinary house. Ceirin slumped bonelessly to the ground in a corner and curled up around herself. Legolas approached her.

"Are you feeling alright?" he asked carefully.

"Fine," she replied, looking up at him. "I'm just cold. And I can't breathe very well in here. I miss the sun. I miss the sky."

"We all do," he said, a bit too quickly. "But then," he added, kneeling down beside her, "we're not elementals of Air, are we."

She looked at him curiously, propped herself up on an elbow. "Gandalf told you about that?"

"Yes. But he didn't need to. I recognized what you were as soon as I took a close enough look."

She smiled greenly. "Pity. He seemed very pleased at having figured that out for himself."

"Gandalf is a wise man. The wisest I have ever met. But sometimes he relies too much on his wisdom, rather than simply asking what he wants to know."

"Sounds like him..." She closed her eyes a few moments, drew a strained breath.

Legolas was about to move away and leave her to sleep, when her eyes flew open again.

"What else do you know about fairies?" she asked with some urgency in her voice.

He looked down upon her small form in its dark little corner. Only her eyes reflected enough light from Gandalf's staff – which was with Gandalf at the other side of the chamber – to be seen properly. They glowed up like cat's eyes in the dark. Peculiar eyes, long, slit and too slanted to be called beautiful, beneath thick eyebrows and a dusty mop of hair. "Not much more than you do, I imagine," he replied after a moment's consideration.

"Does Elrond know about different types of fairies," she asked, frowning.

"Of course."

"Great clouds, you all know more about my own folk than I do. And when was I to be told about this?" she added accusingly.

"When you were old enough, I assume," he shrugged.

"I'm twenty!"

"Exactly. Now go to sleep," he said when he saw her shivering again. "Here, you may borrow my cloak." He removed it from his own shoulders, seemed to consider wrapping it around her, but settled on handing it over.

"Thank you," she replied, too worn out and chilled to the bone to object to his being without a cloak in the cold and damp of Moria. She rolled up in it and stayed as she lay, out like a light.

It was also Legolas who came to wake her some hours later. He stood looking down at her in the shifting shadows caused by Gandalf walking about in the chamber, hesitant to disturb her sleep, but also rather anxious to get his cloak back. Her hands were balled into childlike fists, fingers curled loosely around thumbs, and her mouth hung open a little. He bent down and nudged her gently, got no reaction. As he kneeled to shake her more thoroughly, which still did not succeed in waking her, he noticed how shallow and strained her breath had become.

"Gandalf!" he called to the wizard.

"What is the matter," said he, approaching. The staff in his hand shed more light on her face, which was frighteningly pale. Her eyes had become ghostly hollow, and the tightly closed lids seemed almost translucent.

"Ceirin!" said the wizard. He bent down to grasp her by the shoulder and shake her as Legolas had done, still not waking her.

"She will not wake up," the elf stated the obvious.

"You'll never find a dwarf putting on airs like that for lacking a bit of sunlight," Gimli put in, having strolled over to see what was going on.

"Be quiet, Gimli," said Legolas.

"No, he's right," said the wizard. "Air and sunlight. That must be it. She suffers without them. I fear our fairy will soon be at the end of her tether if she does not see the sky." He reached down and shook her again.

Ceirin's eyes cracked open a fraction. She smacked her dry lips, swallowed with difficulty.

"Wake up, little fairy. This will not do. Get up, for your own sake. The sooner we reach the other end of these blasted mines, the better for you," Gandalf told her.

Gimli looked a bit offended at hearing the pride of his people referred to as 'these blasted mines' but thought better of saying something, pushed Legolas out of the way to start hoisting the fairy to a sitting position. "Bring us some food and water, here," he called to the hobbits, who had been reluctantly chewing on dry bread for lack of firewood and ventilation to cook anything.

Sam scurried over with the requested bread and water. "What's wrong with her?" he asked, handing them to Gimli.

"Nothing that some food in her belly and a quick exit from this place won't cure," replied Gimli as he fed her bits of bread and sips of water.

The fairy turned her head away from the bread, but the water did seem to perk her up a little.

"Will you be able to walk?" Legolas asked when she had shakily gained her feet.

"Damned if I don't try," she said curtly, holding on to the wall with one hand.

He moved to support her, but she shoved him away, almost toppling herself.

"Let me try," she insisted.

He did, but stayed close behind her as the Fellowship assumed the rest of their journey through the mines. They had not been walking ten minutes when Ceirin, ahead of Legolas on a narrow staircase next to a gaping abyss, suddenly stopped, staggered precariously, and then slumped like a dead weight. The elf caught her just in time before she toppled sideways into the chasm.

He set her down on one of the steps, propped up against the wall, called to Gimli and Gandalf who walked ahead of them to stop. He gently cupped her cheek and spoke her name, beseeching her to wake up.

Ceirin's eyes slowly opened. She suddenly started wretching and vomited, brought up all the water that Gimli had force-fed her. It soaked the sleeve of the elf's tunic on the arm with which he was holding her up, but he did not move away even though the faintly sour smell made him a bit queasy. She grimaced as her body cramped up, then fell limp as she lost consciousness.

The rest of the trip through Moria, along with the violent fight and the tragic events at its end, were a blank for the fairy. She rode it all out on either Boromir's or Aragorn's shoulder. Neither man asked Legolas to take a turn carrying her and he didn't offer, for reasons he himself couldn't name.

Ceirin awoke to the glorious feeling of sunlight streaming down on her, filling every vein with scintillating warmth. The air seemed crisper, fresher and thicker with life than she had ever known it. She stayed motionless, breathing as deeply as her lungs would allow, relishing the feeling with every fibre of her being. It hurt deep inside, but even the pain was welcome, for it was more proof that she was still alive.

When the aching subsided, she became aware of sobbing noises close by. She opened her eyes, finding it difficult to wrench her lids apart, tried to sit up and winced when she felt bruises here and there which indicated she must have been handled rather roughly.

Frodo was sitting a few metres from her side, the image of a broken hobbit.

"What is the matter?" she asked him, voice raw and hoarse.

He looked up with swollen eyes. "Gandalf is dead."


	6. chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

Still confused and disoriented, Ceirin watched Frodo get to his feet and begin to walk away, swaying precariously as if drunk. Her eyes were still unfocused, and the image of Frodo seemed shifty like a ghost, trembling in the strong light like a mirage.

"Frodo? What did you say? Where are you going?"

Her urge was to follow him, follow _something, _so as not to be left alone in a blurry state of mind. She began to crawl after him on all fours, not quite trusting her legs to handle the job on their own. She heard Aragorn's voice like white noise in the background and was vaguely aware of its urgency. Frodo was moving away. Gathering her legs underneath her, much like a newborn foal, she broke into a sort of leaping sprint, tripped on a rock. Frodo turned around just in time to see her tripping and falling like a foal with its legs in a knot. Flailing wildly in search of something to grab a hold of, her hand found the chain around Frodo's neck and broke it.

Ceirin's eyes suddenly focused and she seemed to snap out of a stupor, sitting on painfully chafed knees, looking with disbelief at the Ring in her hand as if wondering how on earth it got there.

"Oops," she said sheepishly, holding the hand with the Ring out to Frodo while her ears couldn't quite seem to agree on where they should point. "I'm sorry about that. But don't worry, I'm sure the chain can be mended. You can use this for now," she added, fishing a grimy length of ribbon from a pocket with her other hand and pulling it through the Ring.

Aragorn, who had also come after Frodo, stood stock-still with his hand at ready on the hilt of his sword, looking intensely at Ceirin. Frodo had been pushed down and was on the ground, eyes on Ceirin like a beaten child, suspicious of the grown-up holding out the candy.

She stretched her arm towards Frodo, jiggled it as if trying to tempt him. "Stop playing about, Frodo," she said tiredly. "Take the Ring or I might drop it, I'm not feeling very peachy at the moment."

After seconds that seemed like hours, Frodo reached out, hesitated, snatched the Ring sharply from her hand as if worried that she might bite him and quickly fastened the ribbon around his neck. The broken chain, he put in his pocket for safekeeping until it could be fixed.

Ceirin unsteadily regained her feet, rubbed at the chafed patches on her trousers, righted her back with an agonized groan and turned to look at Aragorn as if seeing him for the first time. "What?" She glanced from him to Frodo and back. "What?" she said again.

Her eyes were sore and watered as she squinted into the sun, wondering why nobody was saying anything.

"Come. We must go. Now," said Aragorn after a long awkward pause.

Ceirin shook her head like someone trying to dislodge soap from her ear. She touched Frodo on the shoulder as he moved past her to follow Aragorn. He flinched.

"Frodo," she said in a tiny voice. "Gandalf. What did you say about him?"

He stared at her hand on his shoulder, and then looked up into her face, a single tear running down his cheek. "He died. To save us," he said in a voice like the rustling of broken feathers. "While you were passed out," he added and immediately seemed to regret it when he realized how accusatory that might have sounded. A strange feeling crept over him. In the debating chamber of Frodo's mind, where Grief and Loss were wailing at the tops of their lungs, Wariness got up and cleared its throat, but was wrestled to the ground by Gratitude and Trust. The fairy didn't want the Ring. She seriously, honestly didn't want it. That was... unusual.

Ceirin shook her head again, while Frodo's words refused to quite sink in, and tottered uncertainly after the rest of the Fellowship.

The flight to Lothlorien was at the same time nervous and dulled. Everyone's mind seemed to be elsewhere, not least of all Ceirin's, who felt like she was stepping in and out of a dream. She was seeing sharp edges around things and blazing bright colors and her legs were moving without seeming to consult with her brain. As the day progressed and she'd been in the sun longer and they closed in on Lothlorien, she gradually began to feel better. But the appearance around them of a group of armed elves still came as a surprise. Normally, she should have heard them coming.

Aragorn was arguing with their tall blond leader, who apparently was named Haldir, she'd caught from Legolas. He didn't seem to have noticed her, but one of the other elves was eyeing her with a funny expression. She looked at him from the corner of her eye, reached up to smooth her hair down to cover her ears and hoped that the coquettishness of the gesture would disguise its true intent.

Too little, too late.

The elf's nostrils flared as he tilted his head and addressed his leader. "Haldir. Why did not the Lady of Light alert us to this unwelcome presence?"

"To whom do you refer?" asked Haldir, looking a little displeased at being interrupted.

The elf stepped forward and took the tip of Ceirin's left ear between thumb and finger, carefully, and pulled it out from underneath her hair.

"A fairy," said Haldir. It wasn't an accusation so much as a mere observation. He raised his eyebrows at Aragorn but it was Legolas who stepped up.

"A fairy," he said, "who was brought up in Rivendell under the care of Lord Elrond. She is one of us. I share your concern that a fairy's loyalty could not be more than questionable at best, but if that is the rule, this one may be the exception."

The conviction of his words was a bit dubitable, but his body language spoke volumes. He stepped into the group from where he'd been waiting, somewhat aside, and came to flank Ceirin. It plucked her heartstrings that he would now use the same gesture to defend her as he had once used to condemn her, though she would have sooner eaten her own boots than admitting as much to him.

Haldir seemed to consider this vote of confidence, though it wasn't really possible to tell what he was considering. He had more jolliness in his face than the average elf, Ceirin decided as she waited with trepidation for him to make up his mind, but he still had the elven blank stare down to a fine art in the face of an unexpected unpleasant surprise.

"You will all follow me," he said abruptly before turning to lead the Fellowship to Caras Galadhon. Ceirin resisted the temptation to stick out her tongue at the elf who had been rude to her ear. She fell in line behind Merry and Pippin, who seemed almost as nervous as she felt. They didn't stop among the gigantic trees, but were led straight up a winding staircase into the grand court of Celeborn and Galadriel.

As the Lord and Lady appeared, a strange sensation washed over Ceirin, as if her body had been hooked up to high voltage. Hyper-aware of every tense tingling muscle and every hair on her body standing on end, she felt extremely vulnerable and exposed. She wished desperately for somebody's back to hide behind, but the only ones with whom she would dare try that were the hobbits, and there didn't seem to be much point, physically speaking. Also, she had a hunch that hiding wasn't really an option. This was when Ceirin acutely felt the terrible loss of Gandalf.

No one spoke to Ceirin at first, or even looked at her, which was fine with her. Celeborn and Galadriel spoke of the future of the Fellowship. They appeared to see things rather gloomy, but she felt that this was somehow underestimating the Fellowship.

Then, abruptly, they were dismissed. Was this it? Ceirin wondered. Was nobody going to pick on her?

She practically jumped out of her skin when she heard Galadriel's voice in her head. "Do not be afraid, creature of the windswept sky," said the voice, "for I have seen your heart and I know that it is true."

Ceirin suspected that this might explain the sensation she had felt, a sort of scan by Galadriel. The others were at this point being led out of the grand court en route to refreshments, rest and possibly a bath. Pippin looked at her anxiously. "Go on," she told him, with a smile that was braver than she felt. "I won't be long. Go on."

She was left alone with Galadriel now, and had to swallow a few times before daring to look up into her face. The elf stood tall, stately and imposing, bathed in some ethereal light and smiling enigmatically.

"Did you wish to speak with me?" said Galadriel, neither unkind nor exactly friendly.

Ceirin blinked at her. "I was under the impression that you wished to speak with me," she said, aware of how stupid that sounded. Elrond had sometimes spoken into her head, but only if he was pissed off about something. He knew that she didn't like it much, held that it was an invasion of her skull and therefore rude. Which was exactly why he did it when he was pissed off.

Galadriel laughed a little. "I merely meant to put you at ease. You seemed frightened."

Ceirin grinned sheepishly. "Don't take it personal. Elves tend to have that effect on me."

"You grew up among elven kind, did you not? Do we still frighten you after all these years?"

"Frighten me? No, not so much. Unnerve me, yes." She grinned again. "But then, I don't take that personal, either."

"There is much bad feeling between my folk and yours. And you have been somehow caught in the middle, unfortunately."

"Do you know why?" said Ceirin suddenly and more loudly than she had intended.

Galadriel tilted her head thoughtfully but didn't speak.

"I'm sorry to be asking this so bluntly," Ceirin said, ears pointing up like antennas. "I don't mean to pretend that you owe me any answers, but I can't seem to get them anywhere else, not even from my own folk. You, who see things that no other does, who know things that are beyond knowledge, you must know this... Why? What is my purpose?" she asked, feeling as if she might as well be asking the sky to change colour. "Do I even _have _a purpose?" she added sadly, studying the floor in front of her.

"I'm afraid I cannot tell you what you wish to know," said Galadriel, seeming to genuinely regret it. "But I can tell you this."

Ceirin perked up in anticipation.

"Nothing happens without a reason, without a purpose. And all will be revealed in due time."

Ceirin's ears drooped. "Thanks, but I've sort of already been told that."

"Then have faith."

"I try, but it's hard without knowing anything at all."

"That, little fairy, is the true test of faith."

"A test..." Ceirin rolled her eyes, and immediately wished she hadn't.

Galadriel didn't seem to have taken offence. "Trouble yourself no more," she said. "The answers you seek cannot be found here. And they cannot be found tonight. Go with Najathiel." She waved a hand and an elven woman stepped onto the flet. "Do not be afraid, Ceirin," she added. "You are our guest here, and you are welcome."

Ceirin nodded in thanks and followed the woman down the staircase. However unsatisfactory this conversation had been on the obvious front, she felt oddly satisfied with it. Even while a little shred of guilt was gnawing at her like a gnat, that she could easier accept the assurances of an elf than those of Amabel.

**A/N: **If you want more chapters, keep sending reviews. It's just not worth it without them.


	7. chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

A little while later, freshly bathed and dressed in some new clothes – which had given Najathiel some trouble selecting as they didn't have much lying around in her size – to replace her own effectively ruined outfit, she rejoined the Fellowship.

Most of them were reclining on pillows in a sort of joint guest room area. Dishes containing various fruits and assorted delectables stood around in strategic places, or had in any case been moved there by the hobbits from less strategic places.

She saw Legolas walking around. He was dressed in an ivory tunic, possibly borrowed while his own clothes were given a wash. She knew him well enough to know that he would prefer a more sensible color for traveling. Even so, he seemed rather pleased with it for the time being. He kept running his fingers over the material on his chest, but stopped doing this when he noticed what had put an impish little grin on Ceirin's face: that her new tunic was an exact replica of his, aside from the size.

Najathiel had tried to put her in a dress, but she had resisted this scheme with all the force of a cat refusing a bath. The woman's assertions that it was only for the evening, that she would be given more practical clothes for traveling the next day, had been quite futile. Ceirin moved around a bit, bending this way and that, to test the flexibility of the material around the shoulders, elbows and knees. The tunic had an annoying way of bunching up underneath her arms, as if unsure of how to make room for what unimpressive amount of bosom she possessed, which made sense as the garment had been designed for a boy. But the trousers proved very satisfactory. Through some weird coincidence, Najathiel had dug up a pair of almost exactly the same shade as her eyes. A shade Legolas would undoubtedly disapprove of, Ceirin thought with some gratification.

Ceirin's still damp hair had been pulled back in two braids starting at the temples. This was something of a feat, as her hair was actually too short for this arrangement. But she was pleased with and somehow proud of the way it showed off her ears, with one straight lock hanging down by either cheekbone. Ironically, she had never worn her hair in this elvish style back in Rivendell. There, she had been desperate to prove in some small way that she was different, if one didn't also count regular antics and rascally behaviour as ways to prove this. Here, her difference was an established, accepted fact, leaving room for exploring ways in which she might be the same.

Ceirin was about to go and ask Legolas for a word when she heard a song in the air, a lovely elven voice singing about tragedy and sorrow.

"A lament for Gandalf," said Legolas.

"What do they say about him?" Merry asked him.

"I have not the heart to tell you," he replied. "For me the grief is still too near."

Ceirin reconsidered. This might not be the best time to bother Legolas with expressions of gratitude for having saved her life in the mines of Moria and defended her in front of Haldir. If there was ever such a time. She wasn't too certain that she was up to it herself, either. The song seemed to be working directly on her tear glands without bothering to check in with the rest of her nervous system, and she was swallowing and blinking to keep the tears back, not quite sure why she bothered.

Ceirin sighed. Grief was an entirely new thing to her. She'd never lived among men, and elves, being immortal, weren't in the habit of dying left and right. She wanted to mourn Gandalf, but wasn't sure how to go about it. She hadn't known him nearly as long or as well as the others and was worried that showing excessive grief might be taken as a personal offence by some of them. The social conundrum was not her forte. All convenient issues of fairy versus elves aside, Ceirin was essentially a loner, which explained her well-developed climb-up-a-tree-and-throw-things-at-whoever-comes-near-it reflex.

She was contemplating doing exactly this – though finding a tree of climbable proportions might be a problem – when Legolas sidled up to her.

"How are you?" he asked kindly, as if this was the most natural thing for him to be doing, and she supposed that yes, maybe in some universe, it could be. She could in any case get used to it.

"I'm well, thanks," she said, quickly wiping underneath her eyes, just in case. "Clean. I'd forgotten what that was like. And you?"

His eyes glazed over as he fixed the middle distance and repeated what he had just told Merry, that he was unable for the moment to speak of his grief or anything related to it.

Ceirin nodded and shuffled her feet uneasily. "I don't suppose you've often lost someone who was dear to you," she said, scrambling for something to say and hoping that he'd let her get away with such a personal question.

"I lost my mother," he replied, stoically folding his hands behind his back. "Everyone does, eventually. The circle of life will not be cheated, not even by an immortal."

"I know," said Ceirin. "People are born, people grow up, soldier on with it and eventually die, regardless of who is or isn't there to watch it happen." She tried to look grown up and wise, aware that the delivery of any statement is a big factor in how it will be received. "But it's a good thing to be watched, for it means that you will be remembered. That's a way of cheating, depending on how you look at it. Gandalf will live on in our thoughts. And maybe..." She stopped, stared vaguely ahead.

"Maybe what?" Legolas prompted.

She shook her head and started twisting a lock of damp hair around her finger to hide her embarrassment. "Nothing," she said softly. "It wouldn't make any sense."

"You were going to say that maybe he will live on in some other way as well, weren't you?" Legolas offered.

Ceirin gaped at him. "Did you just read that out of my mind?" she asked sharply, sounding rather offended at the notion, as she would be.

Legolas gave a little smile that didn't seem to reach his eyes. "You know I wouldn't, Ceirin. Your thoughts are your own. I respect that."

She closed her mouth and nodded firmly, taking on a wider stance. "Appreciated. You have no idea how much. It can be quite daunting, living around telepaths. But if you didn't read my mind, how did you know?"

The elf gave this some thought. "It's quite normal to be in denial about such things, I suppose, and to wish for some kind of magical continuation of that which you cannot let go of. I can scarcely believe that Gandalf is gone, myself, and I was there, watching. I know it, but I can hardly believe it, even though the image is forever engraved in my mind. For you, who were no witness, it must be even harder to accept."

The circumstance that, despite what he'd said, he _was _now speaking of his grief – even if only indirectly, as a point of comparison – quite escaped Ceirin's notice. "I guess," she mumbled, unable to withstand the logic of millennia-old knowledge of souls, even if her heart told her a different story.

"Do not let your dreams be troubled tonight, as I know mine will be," Legolas said, briefly putting his thumb to her cheekbone, like a butterfly kissing away an imaginary tear. "You are too young to be distressed by mourning. Take some food and rest. It has been a long day." Seemingly oblivious to the irony of being the one to offer consolation, he walked away, looking unusually relaxed about the shoulders as if a proverbial weight had been lifted.

Ceirin watched him ensconce himself among some pillows and his private thoughts, and suddenly realized that she'd forgotten to thank him after all. She smiled to herself and decided to leave it. Some things were best left unsaid.

Not much later, when she'd taken a seat not far from Legolas but was politely ignoring him, Frodo came to return the ribbon she had loaned him.

"My chain has been mended," he pointed out, pulling it out of his collar for her to see. The Ring dangled alluringly at convenient grabbing distance from his body. He held his breath as Ceirin reached out, and released it when her hand closed, without doubting, on the ribbon he proffered.

"Thanks for remembering to give this back," she said, grinning self-depreciatingly. "I know it doesn't look like much, this silly bit of ribbon, but it means a lot to me." She pulled it between her fingers and caressed it fondly. Now an unhealthy shade of grey, it was impossible to tell what color it had been originally.

"Why is that?" asked Frodo.

He was kneeling in front of her. Ceirin decided that he looked bad, with dark circles underneath his eyes. Despite having had a bath, he reminded her in some ways of her favorite cat in Rivendell, an ugly one-eared creature that invariably looked as though it had narrowly escaped from a nasty encounter with a fox. Frodo had the same haunted look in his eyes as that cat.

She had to clear her throat before speaking. "Well, when the elves found me as a baby, I was wrapped in a blanket," she explained, "and it was tied together with this ribbon. I still have the blanket somewhere in my room, but I've had this ribbon with me every day of my life for as long as I can remember. In my hair, around my neck or my wrist. I don't know why I keep it with me. I just do."

"It's one of those things you don't need to have a reason for, I suppose," said Frodo, aware that this was a bit of a platitude.

"Look," said Ceirin suddenly, fixing a point over his right shoulder. "It's Galadriel. I wonder what she wants."

The Lady of Light was looking at Frodo. Their eyes met, and she turned and walked away, though really it looked more like floating, incidentally at floor altitude. Frodo got to his feet and followed her.


	8. chapter 8

**A/N: **Good day, all, and thanks for reviewing. There are one or two reviews I'd like to make a comment on, and I'd like to do it here, so I can speak for myself for all to read. The reviewers in question will be sent an email, too, out of respect.

**Dear SnarkyReviewer:** Well, like I also said in the A/N after that first chapter, I am aware that the introduction of Ceirin as a basic premise to this story smells like a Mary Sue. But be fair, if you're going to condemn her, do it based on the whole story. If it's Mary Sue's you want to flame, you have bigger fish to fry. And yes, I know that we've seen the fairy thing before. I can't help it that other people thought of it too. At least I'm being honest about it and telling you whose take on the theme I'm copping, with a twist. In short, if you're going to deny me your cookie, read it _all_, else I don't want it anyway. And by the way, 'creativity, what creativity?'? As someone who is the author of 0 stories (and for some reason I didn't even need to look you up to know that) I think you could at least show some respect to those of us who do give it a go. If you don't like it, just say so, don't get personal.

**Dear Kel6:** Too bad that, like SnarkyReviewer, you only read the first chapter. Thank you, though, for putting in such an effort. The Thranduil thing will be fixed. I was watching the movie again last night, and I caught on that he was indeed not there, so I was intending to fix it anyway, but thanks for pointing it out. I won't be taking any other character out just to get back to the nine-nine equation. Frankly, I don't think that equation is very important. Sorry if you disagree. I know that there are no fairies in Middle Earth, and my apologies to Tolkien if this messes up his meticulous planning. But that's what happens when you play in somebody else's sandbox. You'll be building some sandcastles in places the original owner hadn't planned to build them, or they'd already be there. If you have a problem with that, don't read fanfiction. Maybe you'll end up moving around quite a lot of sand. Do you think that's arrogant? Maybe so. But keep in mind that it's only the sandbox. We cannot touch the cathedral that Tolkien has built, nor would we want to if we could. I can indeed tell chimps and humans apart. The telling apart of a modern man and a Neanderthal – take it from me – is considerably trickier, and the physical difference between fairies and elves is actually even smaller than that. Stick a Neanderthal in a suit and hat and put him on a bus and all people would think they were seeing was a really ugly guy. Expectation influences perception enormously. We wouldn't expect to see a Neanderthal on a bus any more than Legolas was expecting to see a fairy walking around in Rivendell. Keep in mind that Ceirin was raised by elves and was dressed like one. Aside from ears and height, there was nothing marking her out as a fairy. It's already been shown that Ceirin has the sort of haircut that easily conceals the ears. Maybe I should have pointed out clearly that they were at that time actually concealed. I might as well, since I'm going back into chapter 1 anyway. I've never read the books in English, only in Dutch (I know, sacrilege, but I can't help it. The English versions aren't available around my neck of the woods.) so I don't know what happens to contractions in there because they don't exist in Dutch, but in the movies the Hobbits definitely use them. I may here and there have had Legolas and Aragorn use them too. If that apparently bothers the reader so much, I'll fix it. As for the rest of my speech being too modern, hey, if I could talk like Tolkien I wouldn't be scribbling fanfiction, would I? Okay, maybe 'melodrama' and 'reversed psychology' are terms the elves wouldn't have used, but they would definitely have been familiar with the ideas, whatever they called them. After a few thousand years of life experience, you're bound to catch on to the quirks of the mind. Tolkien himself sometimes has his characters use terms that are not innate to their universe and culture. For example, at the appearance of the Balrog, Boromir calls this 'devilry', even while we can be pretty sure that there's no such thing as Christianity in Middle Earth. Tolkien was, imo, simply giving the idea the best name he could think of. Indeed, Ceirin can't fight. The Hobbits are hardly worth their salt with a sword in their hand either, are they. But as Elrond mused, there are other ways she could make herself useful. I appreciate that Elrond is the final authority, but I don't have him down as having such a lust for power as to press his point of view home when Frodo and Gandalf seem prepared to give her a chance. They back her up, just like they did Merry and Pippin, and I think it would have been out of character for Elrond to contest that, even if he could. As for the female thing, well why couldn't there be a girl in the Fellowship? Their latrines are a gazillion square miles of woods, plains, and mountains and their bathtub is a meandering river whenever they can find one. I should think that's shareable. Like I said, this will also be emailed to you. I'd be honoured if you replied and perhaps read the other 7 chapters too.

**Dear Laer4572: ** Yeah, I know that wouldn't have been a good thing. There is of course considerably more of a point to her being out of it, as you will find in upcoming chapters, but it is a lucky thing. I'd be pleased to hear why you think she's a good addition, and maybe in what ways she isn't. Could be something there I could work with.

**Chapter 8**

The next morning at daybreak, Ceirin was the first to wake up. The sun was still too low on the horizon to shed any substantial light among the giants of Caras Galadhon, but a slow, diffuse illumination crept around like mist and teased her eyes open. The soft support of fluffy pillows had become a rare luxury and she stirred gently to relish the feeling, pushed sensitive bare feet into the pillows for that almost sensual tickle.

She noticed that her right hand, extended lazily above her head, rested on somebody's shoulder. Craning her neck to see who it was, she saw Legolas' pale golden hair on a pillow just a few inches away. They lay head to head, she facing east, he facing west. In a reflex, she pulled back the hand and blinked at it. Funny, she thought, that he'd tolerated it, for no doubt he'd known it was there.

She was awake now anyway, and no question of being able to go back to sleep, so she got up, careful not to disturb anyone, and padded off on bare feet.

Breakfast was already dished up all over the place, like supper the night before. Ceirin assumed that either these elves were even more light-footed than the ones in Rivendell, or some nifty telekinesis had been going on. Or, perhaps, she'd slept sounder than a solid brick. With a dish of her favorite morsels in hand, she walked around aimlessly, observed her sleeping friends, found a jug of water and a mirror between two enormous bulging roots.

She put the dish down and kneeled in front of the mirror. Her hair was an awful mess; most of it hung in one long pointy lock over her forehead and between her eyes and the rest of it stuck up haphazardly like a ceiling mop. An unfortunate consequence of having gone to bed with damp hair. A frizzy patch on either side of her head was all that was left of the braids. She dipped fingers in the jug of water and began wetting her hair to smooth it down. When it was finally somewhat presentable, she studied her ears in the mirror. With no lobes to speak of and about as long as the span between her thumb and index finger, she'd always thought them the ugliest ears ever. The notion struck her that maybe all they needed was to be shown for what they were, fairy's ears. She remembered how Amabel had worn her hair. There had been something asymmetrical about it, something eccentric that would have just looked stupid if it hadn't been balanced out by the ears. Actually, aside from some issues of neatness, tangles and length, it had looked more or less like her own mop before taming. She set to work again, combed her bangs into a thick bouncing lock on her forehead and gave the rest an upward twist.

As she sat turning her head from side to side to evaluate the effect (after all, member of the Fellowship or no member of the Fellowship, being twenty and female meant that hair was a potential topic of importance) she spied the reflection of Galadriel in the mirror. The elf was eyeing her with some amusement from the other side of the clearing among the trees. Ceirin's stomach did a flip-flop and she took a deep breath before turning around.

"They're still asleep," she said in a whisper, stating the obvious, while she approached Galadriel. Still some good ten feet away and out of earshot of the others, she stopped suddenly, tilted her head as if trying to get a new angle on what she was seeing. There was something odd about the elf as she stood there, something about the light surrounding her. It wasn't the same careful, calculated brilliance of ethereal glow as she had seen the evening before. This light was different, still white yet somehow colorful with it, more natural.

"What do you see?" Galadriel asked, smiling as though she already knew the answer.

"I don't quite know," said Ceirin. She was playing with focusing and unfocusing her vision and studying how this intensified the colorfulness of the glow. A purple orb seemed to be floating above the elf's head, and descending down her face, neck and torso were what looked like vortexes of light in different colors, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red. "I don't know," she said again. "What _am _I seeing?"

"There is no name for what you see," said Galadriel. "None that I know. And I would not know what it means if it had not been clarified to me, a very long time ago."

"You can see it too?"

"I can. I was taught. Surrounding all living things is a field of forces. It is the field of mentality, emotionality and spirituality. All can be taught to see it. Only to fairies does this gift come naturally."

"I've never seen it before."

"One needs to be balanced within to observe the balance without."

Ceirin grinned impishly. "Then you must be helping me right now, because I don't feel very balanced at all."

"Fairy sight cannot be helped. It is not in its nature. In many ways you are not balanced. I know this. I can see it. But on one crucial point are your emotions shifting towards greater and better balance, and that is the point of who you are. You are learning the essential lesson of self-acceptance, and thereby you are ridding yourself of an illusion."

"Oddly, that makes sense," said Ceirin, recalling Amabel's lesson in vivid detail. A question suddenly came knocking on the door of her mind. It had missed its bus before, as in Ceirin's mind questions did on a regular basis. "Who taught you this?" she asked impulsively.

"One whose name I have not uttered in three thousand years and I shall not now. But my heart tells me that you shall meet him yourself before long. A spirit without shadow, conviction without doubt, enlightenment without reason, guilty only of ingenuousness. As dangerous as a child with a sword. You will meet him, and you will know."

"When? When will I meet this… spirit… fairy?"

"I cannot say. I have no answers to your questions, only food for more questions."

Ceirin smiled warmly and folded her hands. "You have already told me more than I thought you could possibly know. But why didn't you tell me last night?"

"That would have been as foolish as telling a fish about air. How could you have understood what you had not seen?"

"Appreciated," grinned Ceirin, then, mischievously: "I don't suppose there's any more information you'd like to share?"

"No information, but a gift," said Galadriel, reaching into a fold of her dress and holding something out to Ceirin, concealed within her hand. "Once upon a time, elves and fairies could speak one another's language and see through one another's eyes. Since then, our paths have separated and diverged and now, the chasm between us is too deep and too wide to be bridged by understanding. But gifts once exchanged hands. This was given to me by the one of whom I spoke, and I believe that it is time for this gift to be passed on once again."

She opened her fingers, and in her hand lay a small nugget of turquoise, irregularly shaped and with a silver fitting on the thinnest end. It didn't look like much, could have been mistaken for any old pebble on the ground if not for the color.

"A stone of power and protection," said Galadriel. "The color of the sky that would be your home. I believe this was meant for you."

Ceirin picked the stone up off Galadriel's hand, as careful as if she thought it might crumble, and held it up to the light. She half expected something extraordinary to happen and fought back a brief flash of disappointment when nothing did.

"Beware of things of grand and exceptional beauty, for the truest power lies elsewhere," smiled Galadriel. "I would have seen to a chain to complete the gift, but a more appropriate means to wear it resides in your pocket, does it not?"

Ceirin blinked at her and pulled the ribbon from her pocket. "You mean this?"

Galadriel didn't reply but gestured for her to thread the stone onto the ribbon and put it on. Ceirin did so. She tied the ribbon behind her neck, ran her fingers along it and clutched the stone for a moment. "How did you know I had this?" she asked, frowning.

"No fairy is sent into the world without the blessing of her mother and father," Galadriel replied. "Woven into the fabric of that ribbon are one hair of your mother's head and one hair of your father's."

Ceirin just gaped at her, speechless. With a lopsided grin, Galadriel reached out, put one finger under her chin and pushed it back into its anatomically justified position. Then, leaving Ceirin to ponder this unexpected last morsel of knowledge, she turned around and walked away.

Ceirin debated with herself whether she should keep her new acquisition a secret from the others. For no particular reason, if not the same instinct that drives children to keep collections of things that have value only to them hidden away in boxes under their beds. Chance decided the matter for her. As she was bending forward to place a parcel of Lembas in one of the boats, the stone dropped out of her collar. Merry and Pippin happened to be reclining in that boat, rubbing their stomachs and looking a bit green around the gills. Ceirin decided to keep an eye on them in case they were coming down with something. Merry saw the nugget of turquoise dangling from her neck.

"That's pretty," he said. "Where did you find that?"

She glanced at Legolas who happened to be just about to place some Lembas in the same boat. What the heck, she decided, and explained.

Merry and Pippin were a bit confused by the explanation. "Right, but where exactly did it come from then? Oh, never mind." But it was Legolas' reaction that surprised her.

"I am happy for you," he said, flashing a smile.

Ceirin grinned to herself all the way into the boat.

No one said anything about the new hair-do, predictably, all of them being male. Ceirin liked the way the forelock danced around with every move, but it got annoying after a while in the boat, where looking straight ahead was rather a necessary condition for being able to row straight ahead. Her mood was not helped along by the thought of a whole lot of water underneath her. It unnerved her, rather than being frightening, in the same way as a whole lot of earth above her did. She was vaguely aware that this didn't seem like the normal order of things. Earth beneath, air above, water around and fire within, that's how it should be. She was contemplating getting out and flying, but knew perfectly well how Aragorn would feel about that sort of attention-attracting, so she stayed right where she was.

She shared a boat with Legolas and Gimli, which evened out the load to three per boat, and she and the elf took turns rowing, out of a sort of self-evident courteousness rather than actual concern for the other getting tired. This meant that half the time she had nothing better to do than sit and look, and there was plenty to fascinate her. Trees and plants, being living things per definition, shed a light of their own. She played with the focus of her vision and the angle of the sunlight to try and get the best looks at the intriguing new world of life forces. To Ceirin's delight, this gift didn't seem likely to suffer the same fate as whatever it had been that had helped her localize and join her friends. If anything, she was getting better at seeing in this new way. And the best part of it all was that no Amabel had helped her.

But something was worrying her. While the life force of all the trees in the woods they were rowing past seemed to flow together and form one great field, this field was now and then interrupted. Like moths through a focused bundle of light, shadows flitted here and there, invisible among the trees, but standing out for fairy sight like ink blots on paper. And then there was the feeling, a bone-deep hum that crept up and down her spine and made her hackles rise. Something was terribly wrong. Whenever she traded a quick glance with Legolas, she could see on his face that he was aware of it too, whatever the form in which he saw or felt it.


End file.
